Rebecca West, The Strange Necessity. Doubleday, Doran, Incorporated, 1928 (pp. 216-217).

Uncle Wells was as magnificent an uncle as one could hope to have. So, too, was Uncle Shaw. He brought his mind for the children to look at, his marvellous shining mind. Too thin a mind, Philistines would object; but the very finest French watches are as thin as a couple of halfcrowns and yet keep better time than the grosser article. He did for his age what Voltaire and Gibbon did for theirs: he popularized the use of the intellectual processes among the politically effective class. And he did it with such style.

— Rebecca West

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Uncle Wells was as magnificent an uncle as one could hope to have. So, too, was Uncle Shaw. He brought his mind for the children to look at, his marvellous shining mind. Too thin a mind, Philistines would object; but the very finest French watches are as thin as a couple of halfcrowns and yet keep better time than the grosser article. He did for his age what Voltaire and Gibbon did for theirs: he popularized the use of the intellectual processes among the politically effective class. And he did it with such style." in the context of "Rebecca West, The Strange Necessity. Doubleday, Doran, Incorporated, 1928 (pp. 216-217)." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "George Bernard Shaw" (Quotes about Shaw: Alphabetised by surname) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
George Bernard Shaw

About George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist with a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory. He wrote more than sixty plays, including such works as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.